#AMTD x SFF Vol.5 | From Ordinary to Extraordinary: How to build an engaging ecosystem to fuel your growth

2019 Singapore Fintech Festival, a global fintech event organized by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in partnership with the Association of Banks in Singapore, and sponsored by AMTD Group, Deloitte and Prudential, was successfully held from November 11th to November 15th. This Fintech Festival attracted over 60,000 government officials, representatives of regulatory agencies, representatives of financial institutions, technology innovation companies, and institutional investors from more than 100 countries around the world to gather in Singapore, and to discuss technological innovation and development. Singapore Fintech Festival is the largest and most attended global fintech event in the world. AMTD Group has been the biggest supporter and grand sponsor to the Singapore Fintech Festival for three consecutive years.

On November 11th, King Leung, Head of FinTech at InvestHK, Tim Fang, Head of Global Markets at AMTD Group, Michelle Li, Head of Research at AMTD Group, Yinglan Tan, Founding Managing Partner of Insignia Ventures Partners and Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, and Max Liu, Co-Founder & CEO of EMQ and Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, representing government, financial institution, venture capital and start-ups, which are four most important roles in fintech area, conducted an in-depth discussion about how to build an engaging ecosystem to fuel fintech growth. Syed Musheer Ahmed, Founder & CEO of FinStep Asia and Board Member of FinTech Association of Hong Kong, moderated this panel discussion.

King Leung (2nd right), Head of FinTech at InvestHK, Tim Fang (2nd left), Head of Global Markets at AMTD Group, Michelle Li (3rd left), Head of Research at AMTD Group, Yinglan Tan (3rd right), Founding Managing Partner of Insignia Ventures Partners and Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, Max Liu (1st right), Co-Founder & CEO of EMQ and Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, and Syed Musheer Ahmed (1st left), Founder & CEO of FinStep Asia and Board Member of FinTech Association of Hong Kong

According to King Leung, Head of FinTech at InvestHK, InvestHK has been working hard to meet the needs of innovative companies, solve their pain points and connect them with government organizations, investors and related associations to help them get the most effective help and resources, and to save the time and energies that start-ups need for growth.

Tim Fang, Head of Global Markets at AMTD Group, shared with the audience about how AMTD SpiderNet continuously empowers various partners and benefits each other. Taking the cooperation between ATMD Group and Xiaomi as an example, AMTD Group successfully assisted Xiaomi to list on Hong Kong Stock Exchange in July 2018 and the close strategic cooperation between the two has started since then. After that, the two parties co-established an investment platform to broadly select high-quality investees in Asia fintech area. In May 2019, AMTD further cooperated with Xiaomi to establish Airstar Bank and obtained one of the only eight virtual banking licenses in Hong Kong. AMTD has been committed to building long-term strategic alliances with its partners to promote connectivity among all parties in the ecosystem.

Michelle Li, Head of Research at AMTD Group, added that the uniqueness of AMTD SpiderNet’s ecosystem is also to help companies gain cross-industry knowledge and connections. In the development of enterprises, especially in the transition of financial institutions to fintech, understanding the competitive landscape of different industries, including finance, technology, etc., is essential, and the ecosystem provided by AMTD exactly meets this demand and offers cooperative opportunities to companies from a variety of areas seeking innovation so that they could work together. In addition, unique talents are also critical to the implementation of such ecosystem. Both ecosystem participants and implementers should be open-minded entrepreneurs.

Yinglan Tan, Founding Managing Partner of Insignia Ventures Partners and Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, demonstrated Insigna’s platform which helps start-ups to grow. Insignia Ventures Partners currently has about 20% of its funding from more than 50 unicorn companies around the world, and they offer countless valuable ideas. These unicorn companies use their leading positions in the industry and unique understanding to help with the incubation of start-ups in different markets.

According to the introduction of Max Liu, Co-Founder & CEO of EMQ and Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, as one of AMTD SpiderNet ecosystem members, EMQ has established a real-time cross-border payment network platform covering several countries in Southeast Asia. Different from Europe and the United States, there are many types of currencies in Southeast Asia and few connections between different payment systems. More than 70% of people in Southeast Asia do not have bank accounts, and cross-border payment has a huge demand in the market. Instead of serving retail customers directly, EMQ creates a vibrant ecosystem of consumers across Southeast Asia by providing a payment network for merchants.